Film Here's the short review of Cinema Paradiso after a couple of weeks. It's worked well enough so far that I've decided to cancel a few other subscriptions and stump up the extra eight pounds a month to upgrade my subscription to three discs at a time unlimited.
Now for something longer.
The two subscriptions were Spotify and Disney Life. Amazon Music Unlimited caters for all my music streaming needs, with a more flexible and user friendly mobile app and being able to stream through the two Echo Dots we have in the flat now. Since signing up to Disney Life, I think I've only watched about two films. So it seemed reasonable to convert those for more physical discs from CinPa.
Here are the list of positives:
Dispatches and receipts are as timely as latter day Lovefilm. Discs posted by them one day always arrive here the next and similarly those posted back are turned around the next day so I've still been able to churn through four discs a week, if I'm watching one each evening. We'll see how that changes with the increased dispatches.
The My List page is super flexible in terms of priority and you're able to literally put the films in a big long list in the order in which you want to see them. I have mine set up in release order going backwards and have been putting each week's new releases at the top. The algorithm apparently just works down the list from the top until it reaches a title which is currently in stock and allocates it which seems a lot more logical than the seemingly random approach Lovefilm had.
The profile page for each film which sometimes includes a Rotten Tomatoes score. Actor / director filmography pages seem modelled after the IMDb's and includes everybody and everything. Although sometimes it seems a bit inaccurate like suggesting Julia Roberts was in Season Two of Beadle's About which the IMDb contradicts.
The pre-release titles are listed in release date order going backwards which is something Amazon's flavour of Lovefilm couldn't accomplish despite being a feature of proper Lovefilm and Screenselect before it.
Customer service has been excellent so far. I had an initial issue with dispatches and it was sorted out via Twitter DM.
There's an option to buy top up rentals of you want to seriously binge if you have time off. I wonder how many people take them up on this in the Netflix age.
There's a scheme in which if you manage to persuade someone else to sign up you get 1/6 of your subscription off while they're still in the game and actively using the service. If you manage to have six, you get your subscription for free. So if you're thinking of signing up and want to help me out, use this link to begin your sign-up process - which includes a 30 day free trial (which is something I didn't even get).
The catalogue is huge and has items and unlike Lovefilm items don't seem to have been pulled since the service began.
The negatives:
In the New Release section et al, World Cinema and everything else are listed separately. Also there's an odd demarcation between "films to watch" and "movies to watch" which doesn't seem to be very clearly defined in terms of difference. Oh and new releases of back catalogue ("classics") don't have their own section and there's no way to sort them by theatrical release date.
The search is very raw: fine if you're just looking for a single title it falls over if you're looking for a franchise title like Doctor Who which then presents a list of nine hundred odd entries after presenting everything with the words "doctor who" in the title or synopsis and doesn't put those items with it in the title first.
None that I can see other than the price. Back in the day Screenselect charged £14.99 got three discs at a time before reducing the price to £11.99 some way into the Lovefilm ownership. £19.99 seems quite steep although my guess is its because the overheads of posting the discs back have increased a lot since then.
I received two discs in the same envelope today. Lovefilm offered the option of individual dispatch so I've asked if they do too. This will only really be an issue around Christmas time if a bumper envelope is delayed in the post going either way.
August.
Life Over the past month, I've been busy with some things, primarily a life laundry in which, for various reasons, I've had a rethink of all my possessions, deciding what I truly need and what should be sent to the charity shop, recycling and refuse collectors. Over the past couple of years its become apparent that in the fifteen years since my last major clear out, the VHS apocalypse of 2003, I've accumulated again and now the internet exists with its abundant availability there's really no need to hang on to everything, that the want to have things needs to be balanced with the practicalities of psychologically having the space to move about and breath and dance. So I drew up a set of mental rules (both meanings), ordered some new IKEA furniture and set to work.
Books
One of the problems with books is I tend to like buying them but don't spend a lot of time reading them. Eventually it came down to streamlining to my main interests (film, Shakespeare, Doctor Who, music I suppose, bit of fiction) and "dumping" the rest. Plus there's trying to get away from the idea of collections. For a few years I've been trying to build a complete collection of Doctor Who books across the various series. Most have sat on the shelf unread. Now they're sat on the shelf waiting to be read and then they're heading to the nearest charity shop. The Penguin Shakespeares have just gone. I decided to just keep the Ardens - they're more comprehensive.
I've interrogated each book with a set of questions. Have I read you? If I have, will I ever read you again? If I won't is there some especially sentimental reason for keeping you. If there isn't, enjoy the trip to the charity shop. If I haven't, will I ever? No? See you. Might I? Welcome to the book mountain, I'll get to you once I've worked through the backlog of magazines, comics and other business. There's something quite liberating about knowing that the books I own will the those which I truly love or found most useful. Incidentally, I've also instituted a ban on duplicates. All but the hardback versions of the Hitchhikers books are no longer in my possession.
Magazines.
This was brutal. Deciding to keep just Empire, Sight and Sound, Doctor Who Magazine. the Shakespeare's Globe publication and Yahoo! Internet Life (due to its rarity) I've recycled the rest apart from odd issues just because and others which I've set aside for final nostalgic read (mainly some Rolling Stones and Premieres).
Comics.
Mostly gone. Nothing too spectacular and nothing which I've actually looked at in the past twenty-odd years. Mainly UK reprints of US material although I've kept the four issues of Spider-Man about his visit to the UK to cameo on the Wide Awake Club because I don't think that's ever been reprinted or likely to. Otherwise you don't want to know what else has gone. It would make you cry. Moving on.
DVDs
Ha. Well. As I explained when I briefly surfaced for air a few weeks ago, I've thrown out my ludicrously baroque approach to cataloguing my films and whatnot in chronological order by when they're set, as detailed here. At a certain point it became a noose and yet I continued onward, amid all the person hours, diligently attempting to find the exact dating for some off-air recording of a BBC Four documentary so it would fit in the sequence, ultimately spending more time amassing and cataloguing this material than actually bloody watching it, my bedroom filled with little boxes covered in dates, which was fun in principle but a nightmare in practice.
The process of getting to fuck it was pretty simple. At the start of the month, when faced with all of those boxes and knowing I wanted to have less of those boxes, I simply said fuck it and got to work. The alternative was individually deaccessioning things from the database and yes, fuck that. I separated the films from everything else and then headed off into the everything else asking similar questions as the books, echoing the methodology. The film and television documentaries have been retained. Most of the art stuff. History if it references Shakespeare or are related to the plays. Attenborough documentaries. If they're with/by someone who appeared in the old "talks" series on this blog, they stayed. Bin bags filled with DVD-Rs ensued.
The films were harder. I've kept everything, but on the proviso that no dvd retains its original packaging, slipped instead into a plastic wallet. My four thousand odd film dvds now reside in around thirty-six of the original little boxes (pictured here) on a book case sorted alphabetically (no not the individual discs, the boxes at least). This has the new benefit of me not having to consult a fucking database if I want to find a particular title, I can just check through the box, which is liberating. I do still have a database listing them all, but that's mainly so that when I'm out and about I don't end up buying something I don't already own.
In case you're wondering, yes that includes Doctor Who. A decade or so of Doctor Who dvds with just the disc and the insert retained, now sorted into thirteen or so boxes, one for each incarnation, mixed with Big Finish and AudioGo releases all in plastic wallets now too. An extraordinary amount of space has been saved just getting rid of packaging which might look amazing on the shelf but is no use to someone who lives in a flat. Plus it deals with the issue of spines not matching, now that there aren't any. Take that 2Entertain. All of this is not unusual behaviour I expect. Anyway ...
BDs.
They're still in their boxes for now, sorted in alphabetical order on the shelf. Blu-rays always feel more fragile than DVDs, less likely to play properly even if they have a few scratches.
CDs.
Like the DVDs, mostly retained but reduced to plastic wallets. I haven't decided how to sort them yet or if I'm going to bother. The next job will probably to go through them and add the titles to my Amazon music library.
Life Stuff.
Biggest challenge. I set myself a target of being able to put everything life related into four bankers boxes, one each for education, work, tourism and miscellaneous (which is mainly old scripts and amateur writing). Books filled with college notes have gone. Ancient payslips shredded. Pointlessly retained receipts and flyers for shows I didn't see but picked up at venues recycled. Was an exhibition especially good and do I have fond memories? No. Go. So huge was this mass of paper, I saw programmes for exhibitions which I don't even remember happening even though I probably spent hours in there. Did I manage to reach the target? Just about. Knick knacks have gone into a battered old brief case because I've always wanted to do that.
Cables.
Seriously people, sort through your cables. I had a box full, most of which were for technology I'd thrown out or replaced years ago, included a parallel port printer cable from an old dot matrix printer. No one needs that many HDMI or kettle leads or any other nonsense especially since most of it is available on Amazon for a couple of pounds, or Maplin for three times that amount.
Clothes.
Having already relatively recently had a necessary clear out due to losing a quarter of my body weight, this was really about storage. After persevering with the chest of drawers which features on my Twitter profile but has never had quite the right dimensions for any of my clothes, I've replaced it with a set of KALLAX shelves from Ikea, accompanied by these DRONA boxes acting as drawers which are huge and perfect and in which everything fits.
Gone.
Gone, gone, gone. I would say I've lost about a half of my possessions so far (if you factor in all the plastic cases) with another third of the rest going, mainly the books once I've read through them. I feel liberated having realised that I only ever re-read or rewatch about 5% of anything and that the nature of an object as a way of retaining culture has changed. Let's see what happens in the next fifteen years.
Books
One of the problems with books is I tend to like buying them but don't spend a lot of time reading them. Eventually it came down to streamlining to my main interests (film, Shakespeare, Doctor Who, music I suppose, bit of fiction) and "dumping" the rest. Plus there's trying to get away from the idea of collections. For a few years I've been trying to build a complete collection of Doctor Who books across the various series. Most have sat on the shelf unread. Now they're sat on the shelf waiting to be read and then they're heading to the nearest charity shop. The Penguin Shakespeares have just gone. I decided to just keep the Ardens - they're more comprehensive.
I've interrogated each book with a set of questions. Have I read you? If I have, will I ever read you again? If I won't is there some especially sentimental reason for keeping you. If there isn't, enjoy the trip to the charity shop. If I haven't, will I ever? No? See you. Might I? Welcome to the book mountain, I'll get to you once I've worked through the backlog of magazines, comics and other business. There's something quite liberating about knowing that the books I own will the those which I truly love or found most useful. Incidentally, I've also instituted a ban on duplicates. All but the hardback versions of the Hitchhikers books are no longer in my possession.
Magazines.
This was brutal. Deciding to keep just Empire, Sight and Sound, Doctor Who Magazine. the Shakespeare's Globe publication and Yahoo! Internet Life (due to its rarity) I've recycled the rest apart from odd issues just because and others which I've set aside for final nostalgic read (mainly some Rolling Stones and Premieres).
Comics.
Mostly gone. Nothing too spectacular and nothing which I've actually looked at in the past twenty-odd years. Mainly UK reprints of US material although I've kept the four issues of Spider-Man about his visit to the UK to cameo on the Wide Awake Club because I don't think that's ever been reprinted or likely to. Otherwise you don't want to know what else has gone. It would make you cry. Moving on.
DVDs
Ha. Well. As I explained when I briefly surfaced for air a few weeks ago, I've thrown out my ludicrously baroque approach to cataloguing my films and whatnot in chronological order by when they're set, as detailed here. At a certain point it became a noose and yet I continued onward, amid all the person hours, diligently attempting to find the exact dating for some off-air recording of a BBC Four documentary so it would fit in the sequence, ultimately spending more time amassing and cataloguing this material than actually bloody watching it, my bedroom filled with little boxes covered in dates, which was fun in principle but a nightmare in practice.
The process of getting to fuck it was pretty simple. At the start of the month, when faced with all of those boxes and knowing I wanted to have less of those boxes, I simply said fuck it and got to work. The alternative was individually deaccessioning things from the database and yes, fuck that. I separated the films from everything else and then headed off into the everything else asking similar questions as the books, echoing the methodology. The film and television documentaries have been retained. Most of the art stuff. History if it references Shakespeare or are related to the plays. Attenborough documentaries. If they're with/by someone who appeared in the old "talks" series on this blog, they stayed. Bin bags filled with DVD-Rs ensued.
The films were harder. I've kept everything, but on the proviso that no dvd retains its original packaging, slipped instead into a plastic wallet. My four thousand odd film dvds now reside in around thirty-six of the original little boxes (pictured here) on a book case sorted alphabetically (no not the individual discs, the boxes at least). This has the new benefit of me not having to consult a fucking database if I want to find a particular title, I can just check through the box, which is liberating. I do still have a database listing them all, but that's mainly so that when I'm out and about I don't end up buying something I don't already own.
In case you're wondering, yes that includes Doctor Who. A decade or so of Doctor Who dvds with just the disc and the insert retained, now sorted into thirteen or so boxes, one for each incarnation, mixed with Big Finish and AudioGo releases all in plastic wallets now too. An extraordinary amount of space has been saved just getting rid of packaging which might look amazing on the shelf but is no use to someone who lives in a flat. Plus it deals with the issue of spines not matching, now that there aren't any. Take that 2Entertain. All of this is not unusual behaviour I expect. Anyway ...
BDs.
They're still in their boxes for now, sorted in alphabetical order on the shelf. Blu-rays always feel more fragile than DVDs, less likely to play properly even if they have a few scratches.
CDs.
Like the DVDs, mostly retained but reduced to plastic wallets. I haven't decided how to sort them yet or if I'm going to bother. The next job will probably to go through them and add the titles to my Amazon music library.
Life Stuff.
Biggest challenge. I set myself a target of being able to put everything life related into four bankers boxes, one each for education, work, tourism and miscellaneous (which is mainly old scripts and amateur writing). Books filled with college notes have gone. Ancient payslips shredded. Pointlessly retained receipts and flyers for shows I didn't see but picked up at venues recycled. Was an exhibition especially good and do I have fond memories? No. Go. So huge was this mass of paper, I saw programmes for exhibitions which I don't even remember happening even though I probably spent hours in there. Did I manage to reach the target? Just about. Knick knacks have gone into a battered old brief case because I've always wanted to do that.
Cables.
Seriously people, sort through your cables. I had a box full, most of which were for technology I'd thrown out or replaced years ago, included a parallel port printer cable from an old dot matrix printer. No one needs that many HDMI or kettle leads or any other nonsense especially since most of it is available on Amazon for a couple of pounds, or Maplin for three times that amount.
Clothes.
Having already relatively recently had a necessary clear out due to losing a quarter of my body weight, this was really about storage. After persevering with the chest of drawers which features on my Twitter profile but has never had quite the right dimensions for any of my clothes, I've replaced it with a set of KALLAX shelves from Ikea, accompanied by these DRONA boxes acting as drawers which are huge and perfect and in which everything fits.
Gone.
Gone, gone, gone. I would say I've lost about a half of my possessions so far (if you factor in all the plastic cases) with another third of the rest going, mainly the books once I've read through them. I feel liberated having realised that I only ever re-read or rewatch about 5% of anything and that the nature of an object as a way of retaining culture has changed. Let's see what happens in the next fifteen years.
An Apology.
Life Back in the naughties when blogging was still a thing and phrases like "digitally artisanal" weren't being thrown around be people who're stupid enough to be still doing this as a justification for not simply dropping every thought into a fifty tweet thread on some other platform, there'd be how to guides on how to write the best web-logs. Underneath "choose a decent name" and "write in short sentences" was a warning against explaining why you might not have posted in a while. "Don't apologise for not blogging" they'd say, "just blog."
Which is the rule I've tried to stick to across the years, but I posted five times in August having been wandering around here almost daily up until then and well ... Does anybody even notice? Does anybody care? Most blogs that have gone by the wayside across the often do so without much warning. A lot of the old Brit blogs I used to read end on a fairly typical post without a Dear John letter to its audience explaining why it's breaking up with them. Things happen and people just stop. For a while I wondered, if I ever did decide to call time on this, what would I do? Would I simply stop too, or would I have to say something, offer some kind of explanation?
Fortunately, I don't have to decide yet. I'm not going anywhere. As I've said in the past, there's really no point in me not having a blog even if the post frequency oscillates between constipation or full on liquidy diarrhoea. With a whole new Doctor Who to review with some frequency, the ongoing potential for a Sugababes album in the future when everyone's finished their maternity leave and plenty of Hamlets on the horizon (and to catch up on), something will appear here. The reasons for having this blog haven't changed, even if this paragraph in particular sounds like I'm trying to convince myself.
Anyway, so yes, I apologise for not blogging much over the past month, I've been busy with some things.
Which is the rule I've tried to stick to across the years, but I posted five times in August having been wandering around here almost daily up until then and well ... Does anybody even notice? Does anybody care? Most blogs that have gone by the wayside across the often do so without much warning. A lot of the old Brit blogs I used to read end on a fairly typical post without a Dear John letter to its audience explaining why it's breaking up with them. Things happen and people just stop. For a while I wondered, if I ever did decide to call time on this, what would I do? Would I simply stop too, or would I have to say something, offer some kind of explanation?
Fortunately, I don't have to decide yet. I'm not going anywhere. As I've said in the past, there's really no point in me not having a blog even if the post frequency oscillates between constipation or full on liquidy diarrhoea. With a whole new Doctor Who to review with some frequency, the ongoing potential for a Sugababes album in the future when everyone's finished their maternity leave and plenty of Hamlets on the horizon (and to catch up on), something will appear here. The reasons for having this blog haven't changed, even if this paragraph in particular sounds like I'm trying to convince myself.
Anyway, so yes, I apologise for not blogging much over the past month, I've been busy with some things.
Diana.
History The Guardian asks, Where were you when Diana died?
I was in bed.
For some reason I'd woken up very early that morning, perhaps 5pm. which was entirely unlike me until my routine became waking up at 6:45 every day. After making a cup of tea, I settled in to watch The Hudsucker Proxy which I'd video taped overnight from Channel 4. In between times, with no internet, no social media, I hadn't turned on the television and when I did, it was after popping the video directly back into the machine, bypassing whatever was on Channel 4 at the time.
Once "You know, for kids..." was over, at the end of the credits, Channel 4 announced that Diana had been in an accident. Which she had at the time of recording, and this was the information I passed on to my parents, the information they woke up to because I woke them up to tell them. Only after I'd left the room did I realise that this was old news and by the time we turned on the television her death had been confirmed.
I was in bed.
For some reason I'd woken up very early that morning, perhaps 5pm. which was entirely unlike me until my routine became waking up at 6:45 every day. After making a cup of tea, I settled in to watch The Hudsucker Proxy which I'd video taped overnight from Channel 4. In between times, with no internet, no social media, I hadn't turned on the television and when I did, it was after popping the video directly back into the machine, bypassing whatever was on Channel 4 at the time.
Once "You know, for kids..." was over, at the end of the credits, Channel 4 announced that Diana had been in an accident. Which she had at the time of recording, and this was the information I passed on to my parents, the information they woke up to because I woke them up to tell them. Only after I'd left the room did I realise that this was old news and by the time we turned on the television her death had been confirmed.
"real time"
Film Sometimes the ponies run free. Here's David Bordwell, just as I'd hoped, analysing the narrative structure of Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk:
Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia has a really weird middle hour. The opening and closing hours cross cut pretty conventionally as you might expect in a hyperlink film, but in that central hour the quiz programme suggests that were chronology watching about half an hour of "real" time but the whole section fills an hour. Anderson shifts backwards and forwards to show parallel actions one after the other but without repeating material from the quiz programme. It's subtle enough that you might notice notice until after multiple viewings.
"A more conventional choice would be to confine the action to a fairly brief stretch of time, say two hours, with the rescue fleet arriving at the climax. There might even have been an effort to handle the action as occurring in “real time,” that is, with the duration of the scenes matching their duration in the story. In any event, Nolan could have crosscut his four men–Farrier in the air, Dawson and others at sea, Bolton and Tommy around the Mole–at the points when their activities are roughly simultaneous. If Nolan wanted to include earlier incidents, such as Tommy’s escape from the Germans or his efforts to board the Red Cross ship, those could have been presented as personalized flashbacks. Instead, all that material appears in chronological scenes, but on three distinct time scales."As with any film, it'll take several years for the implications of Nolan's decisions to marinate. There are plenty of interesting indie films which have messed with the time scheme in an interesting way -- 11:14 replays the lives of several people involved in a motor incident and shows it from each of their perspectives, but this is a rare occasion when it turns up in a mainstream film (the grey area between art house and blockbuster somewhere Nolan knows all too well).
Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia has a really weird middle hour. The opening and closing hours cross cut pretty conventionally as you might expect in a hyperlink film, but in that central hour the quiz programme suggests that were chronology watching about half an hour of "real" time but the whole section fills an hour. Anderson shifts backwards and forwards to show parallel actions one after the other but without repeating material from the quiz programme. It's subtle enough that you might notice notice until after multiple viewings.
Scottish Hamlet.
TV Good grief, the BBC have announced a classic theatre broadcast for BBC Two. Oh, yes, it's Andrew Scott's recent Hamlet which is very exciting especially since it's being produced by Illuminations:
The press release is a bit ambiguous about whether it's a theatre recording or a reshoot for television. I've asked Illuminations via Twitter for a confirmation.
"Robert Icke, Director (and Almeida Theatre Associate Director) says: “It has been a real joy to work with such a gifted and dedicated company of actors on bringing this most-famous play to audiences in 2017. The production has been on a wonderful journey from the Almeida to the West End, and I am very much looking forward to this next step on BBC Two. To be able to offer our version of Hamlet to as wide and diverse an audience as possible has always been of paramount importance to us, and now we are thrilled to be able to bring it to people across the country.”"
Multi-camera recording in the theatre, done quite early in the West End run, with Juliet Stevenson as Gertrude— Illuminations (@Illuminations) August 16, 2017
Lovefilm RIP.
Film In case you were wondering this gap between blog posts is because I'm having something of a life laundry, deciding which books I really want to keep and reorganising my dvd collection.
Sidebar: I'm ditching the chronological approach to classification by the date in which everything is set in favour of alphabetical order so I might have have chance of finding a film without having to consult a bloody database.
Yes, I did spend a lot of time curating that database and yes, I wish I could tell the younger version of me to watch more of the them rather than many the many minutes it took trying decide whether a particular western was set at the beginning or end of the 1880s. But I'm through the tunnel and out the other side.
This interruption to my sorting schedule, is to mark some time. This morning Amazon sent its loyal Lovefilm by Post users an email advising that the service is to close on the 31st October this year. Happy birthday to me.
As you know, other than for a brief gap last year, I've been receiving discs from some version of this company since 2002, over fifteen years, starting with ScreenSelect then to Lovefilm when they merged and finally on Amazon's website.
Honestly, I knew this would be happening soonish. Streaming has entered primacy, with physical sales of films dropping massively and even blu-rays showing signs of serious discounting.
Which isn't to say I wasn't pretty devastated. The key reason why I returned to the service was because if you're interested in something other than the newest releases or the popular canon the available catalogue on subscription streaming is a joke and I can't really afford to pay for everything separately.
But it turns out there's a further option, the cutely named Cinema Paradiso, whose website has some of the old school charm of ScreenSelect and also seems to have titles that Amazon doesn't even have in their database yet (and now we know why).
So I'll be migrating over there and see what happens. If it's rubbish, I haven't lost anything. But for all they say that they're not closing and investing in new titles, I suspect I'm putting off the inevitable. We'll see.
Now, back the book mountain. We'll speak again soon.
Sidebar: I'm ditching the chronological approach to classification by the date in which everything is set in favour of alphabetical order so I might have have chance of finding a film without having to consult a bloody database.
Yes, I did spend a lot of time curating that database and yes, I wish I could tell the younger version of me to watch more of the them rather than many the many minutes it took trying decide whether a particular western was set at the beginning or end of the 1880s. But I'm through the tunnel and out the other side.
This interruption to my sorting schedule, is to mark some time. This morning Amazon sent its loyal Lovefilm by Post users an email advising that the service is to close on the 31st October this year. Happy birthday to me.
As you know, other than for a brief gap last year, I've been receiving discs from some version of this company since 2002, over fifteen years, starting with ScreenSelect then to Lovefilm when they merged and finally on Amazon's website.
Honestly, I knew this would be happening soonish. Streaming has entered primacy, with physical sales of films dropping massively and even blu-rays showing signs of serious discounting.
Which isn't to say I wasn't pretty devastated. The key reason why I returned to the service was because if you're interested in something other than the newest releases or the popular canon the available catalogue on subscription streaming is a joke and I can't really afford to pay for everything separately.
But it turns out there's a further option, the cutely named Cinema Paradiso, whose website has some of the old school charm of ScreenSelect and also seems to have titles that Amazon doesn't even have in their database yet (and now we know why).
So I'll be migrating over there and see what happens. If it's rubbish, I haven't lost anything. But for all they say that they're not closing and investing in new titles, I suspect I'm putting off the inevitable. We'll see.
Now, back the book mountain. We'll speak again soon.
"I've spoken to erm ... a few ..."
TV This morning Jodie Whittaker gave her first broadcast interview since the news to 6 Music's Shaun Keaveny while publicising her new drama vehicle Trust Me in which she (ironically) plays someone pretending to be a doctor at just the moment when she herself is going to be playing the Doctor.
The entire audio of the interview is here and there a video clip here in which she offers some of the most expressively Doctorish gesticulations since Matt Smith's appearance on his reveal show. In few of her roles, which tend to towards the dower, is she able to tap into this expressively sunny side and let's hope she's allowed to a lot of this for Who.
Brilliantly she knows what's about to happen in the process of mentally preparing herself. She knows that to some extent her life's about to change, that like no other role, everyone is going to have an opinion (sorry!) globally but fortunately she says she's not on any social media so she's shielded from idiots like me.
BBC News has a video interview of her saying much the same things in a more sober voice:
God, she's going to be great.
The entire audio of the interview is here and there a video clip here in which she offers some of the most expressively Doctorish gesticulations since Matt Smith's appearance on his reveal show. In few of her roles, which tend to towards the dower, is she able to tap into this expressively sunny side and let's hope she's allowed to a lot of this for Who.
Brilliantly she knows what's about to happen in the process of mentally preparing herself. She knows that to some extent her life's about to change, that like no other role, everyone is going to have an opinion (sorry!) globally but fortunately she says she's not on any social media so she's shielded from idiots like me.
BBC News has a video interview of her saying much the same things in a more sober voice:
God, she's going to be great.
Along Came Polly.
TV In a break from tradition, the BBC have bothered to release the San Diego Comic Con trailer for the next bit of Doctor Who without us outside the hall having to moan about it first. Oh and my, scenes, scenes.
(1) Bill's back -- so as expected we'll get to see her getting a proper send off from him. Also hugging. Proper hugging. Capaldi's a hugger finally.
(2) Moffat's using his final lap to reshoot scenes from The Tenth Planet pt 4. Including the regeneration because why not. Expect conspiracy theories that it'll include footage from the actual episode as way of revealing that it's been found.
(3) Who's playing Polly here?
It's difficult to tell from this poorly lit screenshot but it could well be Ellie Spicer, who portrayed the actress playing Polly in An Adventure in Space and Time. Here she is in another poor screenshot I just took from the screen while watching the blu-ray ten minutes ago:
Different jumper. Judging by this shot from The Tenth Planet:
The one from Adventures is more accurate.
(4) I bet Mark Gatiss is playing an ancestor of the Brigadier.
(5) Anyway it looks like a big old celebration of the Moffat era including his anniversary successes. It would be astonishing if there weren't more cameos despite what he says about not wanting to have a victory lap. This is not some ordinary story which happens to have a regeneration at the end. Like The War Games, Logopolis, Survival and The End of Time, it's the end of an epoch.
"Let's go get you a lanyard."
TV Samira Ahmed writes for The New Statesman on the talismanic nature of lanyards:
"Two 1990s television shows gave us our figureheads: Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files, flashing her FBI ID at every opportunity, and later Allison Janney’s C J Cregg in The West Wing, who embodied the idea of the female who had broken through, thoroughly qualified to run the operation. The lanyard was their symbol of arrival and as much of a challenge to the old order as their brightly coloured pantsuits were."In the more customer service orientated employment I have, due to wearing my own clothes the lanyard becomes the uniform. Putting it on means I'm working, off I'm on my break or out of the door home.
Doctor Foster.
TV The Guardian recently published a brief but excellent piece from an academic about the implications of Doctor Who companion Bill's foster status:
"The first thing I noticed is that Bill is a working adult in her 20s, but still lives with her foster mother, Moira. Young people in care are often expected to become self-sufficient more quickly than their peers, but Bill’s situation is a nice example of the recent shift in policy that recommends young people have more gradual transitions to adulthood. Although we see Bill move out in episode four, this doesn’t work out, and by the sixth episode she is back living with Moira. I wonder how many viewers are aware that Bill’s experience isn’t the norm? How many would question the apparent ease with which Bill returned to live with her foster mother? In Scotland, less than 3% of young people eligible for support after leaving care remain with their former foster carers."I suppose one of the disappointments of the series is that this back story element didn't resolve itself with any great unity. Although I suppose that's probably more realistic and akin to classic Who where companions would come and go and very rarely exited in a way which spoke directly about their character.
Ken's Show: Exploring the Unseen. Press launch at Tate Liverpool.
Art Next year, Tate Liverpool celebrates its thirtieth anniversary and this morning held a press launch in one of the handling rooms, with coffee and danish pastries to explain their plans. The room is less glamourous than you might expect, with its heavy duty floor and white walls, the kind of space you might expect to be used to actually display paintings at the Biennial. But the large wooden storage boxes reveal some glamour with foreign destinations written on with in black marker or printed labels.
Ken Simons began working for Tate in 1974 almost straight from school and particularly as a handler in the Liverpool branch since 1998. As a way of commemorating his long service and imminent retirement and providing a retrospective view of the exhibitions which have been at Tate Liverpool since the start, he's been given the opportunity to jointly curate a show containing the work of thirty artists (one for each year), his favourites amongst those he's been tasked with placing in the the gallery spaces across his career.
After an introduction from Francesco Manacorda, the current artistic direction of Tate Liverpool, Ken offered a brief description of some of his favourite exhibitions across the years, notably the Rothko which opened the building and which I have fond memories of from a school trip. He spoke of how exciting it was to be at the launch of a major art gallery, the staff pulling together to present the space to an audience queuing around the block for entry.
You can read in this post from 2013 what Tate Liverpool has meant to me across the years and this sounds like an inspirational way to celebrate its legacy. The press pack contains a list of the works which will be included but I've chosen not to look preferring to be surprised by some old friends. There's bound to be a Proustian rush to the exhibition and I want to enjoy the surprise. With so much work to choose from, I can't wait to see what will be there.
Ken Simons began working for Tate in 1974 almost straight from school and particularly as a handler in the Liverpool branch since 1998. As a way of commemorating his long service and imminent retirement and providing a retrospective view of the exhibitions which have been at Tate Liverpool since the start, he's been given the opportunity to jointly curate a show containing the work of thirty artists (one for each year), his favourites amongst those he's been tasked with placing in the the gallery spaces across his career.
After an introduction from Francesco Manacorda, the current artistic direction of Tate Liverpool, Ken offered a brief description of some of his favourite exhibitions across the years, notably the Rothko which opened the building and which I have fond memories of from a school trip. He spoke of how exciting it was to be at the launch of a major art gallery, the staff pulling together to present the space to an audience queuing around the block for entry.
You can read in this post from 2013 what Tate Liverpool has meant to me across the years and this sounds like an inspirational way to celebrate its legacy. The press pack contains a list of the works which will be included but I've chosen not to look preferring to be surprised by some old friends. There's bound to be a Proustian rush to the exhibition and I want to enjoy the surprise. With so much work to choose from, I can't wait to see what will be there.
Doom Coalition 4.
Audio Now that the Capaldi era is almost done bar the shouting from manbabies about his replacement, it's time for me to catch up of the Eighth Doctor's adventures, some short stories and audios and this latest boxed set. The upturn in quality continues from last time with a really solid, often strong final selection of stories and a final installment which doesn't anticlimax and due to Big Finish's expanded license doesn't need to allude to Gallifrey's future, can simply suggest that they're all doomed. Once again, across the set, despite what's said in the accompanying documentaries, these two companions for the most part don't feel as integral to the story in a way that Eighth's previous friends have but arguably such things are more recent innovations and we're rarely bothered by such things when watching classic stories. Plus that's not a criticism of Nicola Walker or Hattie Morahan who're both remarkable. The making of indicates that these two will return in a future boxed set series which means we're stuck with this format for the foreseeable future. God, I miss the stand alone stories. Eighth never quite seems comfortable here. Any-hoo ...
Ship in a BottleA three hander about the TARDIS team facing oblivion and never giving up hope. It's an episode long version of the scene from The Stolen Earth in which the Tenth Doctor just gives up until Donna nags him into action. All three have very specific points of view. Eighth is hopeless, Liv won't give up and Helen has the very human response of sheer panic. But for all that, it's not as way out or innovative as some other similar regulars only stories like Scherzo, which seems like one of the franchises bravest few hours as time goes on. Cantankerous Eighth never sits well with me and his treatment of his friends in the early stages feels a bit like an artificial attempt at some conflict similar to that earlier story, but it lacks the bite to make us genuinely concerned about his behavior and the consequences going forward. Nevertheless, like Absent Friends previously, it's the stand out installment in this set.
Songs of LoveThe flip side of the cliffhanger resolution from the Doom Coalition 3 set and what amounts to an extra installment of the River Song Diaries. The banner headline is Professor Song visiting Gallifrey, something which would have been impossible on screen this way, before the Time War, still recognisably the place initiated by Robert Holmes. Her reaction is similar to someone who's lived in a different country for years before being brought back to their parents homeland, aware of what to expect, knowledgeable about the landscape through osmosis but still being disorientated. Alex Kingston is superb in these scenes as plot threads from River's past but the franchise's future become important and she's able to twist the context to suite her own ends. Once again your correspondent pleads with Big Finish for a Bernice Summerfield cameo in the next River Song series or a special release possibly also starring Iris.
The Side of the AngelsLike the "other" Master in Dark Eyes, the Rufus Hound version of the Meddling Monk is entirely new to me, having skipped over his previous Big Finish appearances. A juicier role for Rufus Hound than he was given in the television series, he very much seems to be enjoying the ripe dialogue and flamboyant characterisation. This is notably set before the Graham Garden incarnation possibly in order to lessen the potential fallout from Eighth of having to deal with the Monk's role in the death of Tamsin and especially Lucie, although the TARDIS Datacore pages indicates that there's some far messier history than that. Otherwise, the episode is stuffed with the epic remodeling of NYC and an ingenious utilisation of the Weeping Angels, whom Eighth is well aware of, perhaps after meeting them in his Fifth incarnation. I don't think classic and nu elements mixing like this will ever be any less strange.
Stop The ClockAnd so yet another Eighth Doctor story resolves itself around a conquest of Gallifrey. Overall this is fine, it certainly ties up everything which has come before it and has some excellent business for McGann to get his chops into, but there's not a terrific amount here that's different to similar predicaments with a rogue President of Gallifrey taking control, the genocide of the High Council and an overall sense of doom. The script is amusingly cagey about who the current President is supposed to be, perhaps so that if necessary in the future, it can be one of the various incarnations of Romana or someone else if necessary. But please, please, please can the next series have nothing to do with the Time Lords or Gallifrey? I can't imagine the upcoming Time War boxes are going to be direct continuation of this. That would be silly.
I Know Places.
Music Hermione Hobby of The Guardian on her brush with celebrity as she held hands with Taylor Swift on leaving a restaurant interview:
"Taylor – I suppose we were now on post-selfie first-name terms – must have seen my terror. She asked in a droll and gentle way if I was “ready for a photo shoot” then took my hand firmly and out we strode. Cameras flashed, voices rose and, like the Red Sea parting, the crowd shifted to allow her into the waiting Suburban. And then I was on my own, walking towards the subway feeling dizzy."The column also explains why Twitter's pretty much the only "forum" I visit now.
We Don't Give A Damn About Our Friends.
Music Tom at Freaky Trigger's Popular section has a brilliant excavation of the "Sugababes" Freak Like Me, from its samples to its cultural significance:
"You can get an idea of where “Freak” sits at angles to the group’s later sound by hearing the bonus version on their Overloaded singles collection – the “Maida Vale session”, performed live. Here the song is thoroughly de-X-ified, the grimy pulse of the Tubeway Army synth line turned into a rock backing track with occasional keyboard stabs. And the band rush the ending, going straight back into the chorus after “good for me”. It highlights something important about the single – how much in tension the Sugababes and the sound are. On their earlier and later records, the group and their vocal interplay are the focus. On “Freak Like Me”, there’s less room for harmonising: the song and the singers are a dam built against the backing’s electronic flood. At the end, it breaks."The bootleg that led to Freak Like Me is above. In parts it's like the listening to the Amelle version of Red Dress, so close are the vocal choices [via].
That hand, is it male or female?
TV He's winning, it's a short match oh this is unbearable. Go Rodge. Go Rodge. Yes! Now, it's going to be now. Oh speeches. Well fine, I have time to go to the toilet. What this is still on? Right prizes given. It's going to be now. Oh no there's some walking about. Still talking, more talking, more talking. Oh god when will this end? They're filling aren't they? Fill, fill, fill. More talking oh when will this end.
Finally. Here we go. Aha, they're fucking with us. Hoodie. Is that Captain Jack's coat? Oh yes very clever, just tell us. Oh its a bloke. Look at the shoulders, broad shoulders. Yes definitely a bloke. Sigh. It's going to be Kris ... oh that walk isn't very male. Not sure about the legs though. That hand, is it male or female? I can't tell? Oh here we go, hood off, that eye, I recognise that eye, it's, it is her, it bloody is her, yes, yes, yeeeeeeeeasssss. Clap, clap, clap, clap.
Pretty much sums up my reaction. The bookies got it right again. Jodie Whittaker IS the Doctor. Fucking, fucking amazing. Scream. Scream. Scream.
Apart from breaking the gender barrier and all that, here's why Jodie's casting is extraordinary.
We have absolutely no idea what her Doctor is going to be like.
For the most part you can have some idea of a Doctor by the casting. You knew Tennant would offer us chaste Casanova, Matt Smith would be eccentric, Capaldi would be brash.
But Whittaker's an actor of such range that she could play it in all kinds of ways. Although she's often been typecast as wife, girlfriend or sister, almost all of these characters have been different souls. Her IMDb in the ten years since her first screen credit is remarkable eclectic.
Her first interview and all the usual quotes are at the BBC Press Office. Chris Chibnall decided to cast a woman beforehand and cast the part on those terms. There's a lovely bit about him approaching her on the Broadchurch set.
And to address the assholes already complaining that the Doctor can't be female, it's going to ruin the programme, the SJWs have won and other bullshit.
Fuck off. I want nothing more to do with you.
This is going to be amazing.
The New Whittaker.
TV This is one of those slightly obligatory Doctor Who related posts in which you all will have seen the above trailer/announcement but it feels like I should post it anyway so that it's a fixed point in time when looking back through the blog in the future. Plus, I can start the relevant label/keyword for these posts. Expect my instareaction tomorrow night depending on how long the tennis match runs on for and whether I have to cook the dinner.
Just so this isn't a complete lost cause, here's some added content. Earlier, Clayton Hickman solicited responses on how we each found out about each new incarnation of Doctor Who. Here's my list, correcting a few things I got wrong when I tweeted him back:
1: Wasn't born yet
2: Wasn't born yet
3: Wasn't born yet
4: Wasn't old enough to be watching yet
5: The end of Logopolis
6: The Doctor Who Radio Times 20th Anniversary Special
7: BBC TV News
8: The Guardian
9: BBC News
10: Watching Casanova or as it turned out a midnight press release which acted more as a confirmation than anything.
11: That random Doctor Who Confidential
12: The live show.
Oh and for completion sake:
Shalka: The Doctor Who Official Website
WAR: The Name of the Doctor (although set photos indicated her was going to be playing someone)
Who's next? Tonight the betting patterns which gave away Capaldi have started gather again around Jodie Whittaker which given the Broadchurch connection doesn't feel like utter bullshit and a could be a very good thing indeed if you're ticking boxes. Long career, range of work, bloody good actor. We'd be lucky to have her. We'll see.
A Viewing Order for all of the Claire Temple episodes in the Netflix MARVEL series.
TV Claire Temple, so winningly played by Rosario Dawson is my favourite character in the whole of the MCU, films or television. Appearing across the Netflix series, she's always the one thing I look forward to and indeed in Iron Fist she's about the only reason to continue watching later in what's otherwise a quite boring and confused series.
With The Defenders finally arriving in a month's time, I don't currently have time to binge repeat everything so I've decided to just watch those episodes featuring Temple, see how much of a coherent story they are on its own.
As an aid, I've created this watch this for the episodes in which she features across the series which about three of you might also find useful too:
Daredevil (Season One).
2. Cut Man
4. In the Blood
5. World on Fire
6. Condemned
11. The Path of the Righteous
Jessica Jones (Season One).
13. AKA Smile
Daredevil (Season Two).
3. New York's Finest
10. The Man in the Box
11. .380
Luke Cage (Season One).
5. Just to Get a Rep
6. Suckas Need Bodyguards
7. Manifest
8. Blowin' Up the Spot
9. DWYCK
10. Take It Personal
11. Now You're Mine
13. You Know My Steez
Iron Fist (Season One).
5. Under Leaf Pluck Lotus
6. Immortal Emerges from Cave
8. The Blessing of Many Fractures
9.The Mistress of All Agonies
11. Lead Horse Back to Stable
13. Dragon Plays with Fire
The Defenders.
1. The H Word
2. Mean Right Hook
3. Worst Behaviour
5. Take Shelter
7. Fish in the Jailhouse
8. The Defenders
Literally Beaming.
Science Every day, I find myself gaping open mouthed as what seemed like something which could only happen in the future not too long ago is suddenly presented to me. Yesterday it was the ability to stream an otherwise obscure eighty year old silent film from China instantaneously through my television.
Here's my open mouthed gape moment for today.
First object teleported to Earth's orbit:
Here's my open mouthed gape moment for today.
First object teleported to Earth's orbit:
"Chinese researchers have teleported a photon from the Gobi desert to a satellite orbiting five hundred kilometres above the earth."The AV Club has a user friendly explanation but if I remember my Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual correctly, the methodology is almost precisely the same as that imagined in the 60s and developed across the years by successive writers albeit on a much more complex scale -- reprogramming particles in one place so that they're resemble a source pattern. We're still probably hundreds of years away from being able to move a person let alone a more complex object but good god. Gape. Open mouthed.
We Need To Talk About Peter Parker.
Film Spider-man: Homecoming is out and it was pleasure to see its gloriousness at the lunch time showing in Screen One at FACT's Picturehouse in Liverpool. Short audience report. About ten of us, barely a peep out of anyone apart from me laughing like a hyena on the front row. I'm amazed no one went out to complain about the noise I was making.
Few films this year have made me laugh this much, just as few films have had me this enraptured, hanging on to every moment. Visually and narratively rich, it's simply one of the best comic book films ever made. But enough of that hyperbole, let's survey some talking points.
There will be spoilers.
Having never really had much love for the Raimi films, enjoying The Amazing Spider-Man more than most, this feels to me like the most "Spiderman" film of the lot, the one which seems to preserve the essence of the comics, gets the character right. It builds on what we saw in Civil War, the excitable teenager still happy to have these amazing powers, still discovering what he's capable of.
This is the best Spiderman film ever.
Why does it succeed? By tossing out everything but the essence of the character and his mythology. If the Raimi films are akin to the ITV Sherlock Holmes adaptations starring Jeremy Brett and the following two films starring Andrew Garfield are Sherlock, Spiderman: Homecoming is Elementary. Loads of recognisable elements reconfigured in the service of telling a good story.
Where the previous films were in a rush to introduce the more iconic elements like the Daily Bugle and JJJ, Mary-Jane and Gwen Stacy, Oscorp and the Green Goblin, probably admittedly with a view to not repeating itself Homecoming offers a much revised version of the Vulture, a younger Aunt May and a bunch of school friends who are totally unrecognisable from those who appear in the comic.
We don't really know the extent to which Spidey's mythology has been added to the MCU's rights database, how much the MCU actually has access to and so working creatively around. Plus the walled garden approach to their various iterations means we're unlike to see Vincent D'ONofrio turn up at some future point as Kingpin who's another of Spidey's great antagonists.
Few films this year have made me laugh this much, just as few films have had me this enraptured, hanging on to every moment. Visually and narratively rich, it's simply one of the best comic book films ever made. But enough of that hyperbole, let's survey some talking points.
There will be spoilers.
Having never really had much love for the Raimi films, enjoying The Amazing Spider-Man more than most, this feels to me like the most "Spiderman" film of the lot, the one which seems to preserve the essence of the comics, gets the character right. It builds on what we saw in Civil War, the excitable teenager still happy to have these amazing powers, still discovering what he's capable of.
This is the best Spiderman film ever.
Why does it succeed? By tossing out everything but the essence of the character and his mythology. If the Raimi films are akin to the ITV Sherlock Holmes adaptations starring Jeremy Brett and the following two films starring Andrew Garfield are Sherlock, Spiderman: Homecoming is Elementary. Loads of recognisable elements reconfigured in the service of telling a good story.
Where the previous films were in a rush to introduce the more iconic elements like the Daily Bugle and JJJ, Mary-Jane and Gwen Stacy, Oscorp and the Green Goblin, probably admittedly with a view to not repeating itself Homecoming offers a much revised version of the Vulture, a younger Aunt May and a bunch of school friends who are totally unrecognisable from those who appear in the comic.
We don't really know the extent to which Spidey's mythology has been added to the MCU's rights database, how much the MCU actually has access to and so working creatively around. Plus the walled garden approach to their various iterations means we're unlike to see Vincent D'ONofrio turn up at some future point as Kingpin who's another of Spidey's great antagonists.
Was there too much MCU? No. Not at all. If MARVEL finally have the chance to put Spiderman into their universe why wouldn't they take advantage and allow for his existence to be entirely absorbed into the mythology? It might even be possible that one of the reasons SONY agreed to the deal was on the understanding that a major player like Iron Man would appear in the film to make it distinctive to their previous offerings.
One of the problems with the previous films was that his existence and that of the villains never quite sat well without being part of some larger universe filled with superhumans. Spiderman by his nature, along with numerous other "street level" heroes, exists to contrast with the gods and their epic intergalactic battles. Whenever he becomes involved, he is often the audience's way in to the madness.
Homecoming makes that contrast the key story point, of Peter learning that he's not old enough to join the big guys yet, that he should be content to be kid with extraordinary powers, dealing with neighbourhood problems, not to try and skip his development and to an extent training. In all of the fight scenes he's clumsy. He's yet to completely develop his skills.
One of the earlier 60s strips had a newly bitten Spiderman turning up at the Baxter Building attempting to become a member of the Fantastic Four. He failed badly and it wasn't until many years later (barring a few What If? stories) that he had a chance to join that group, when he was older, wiser and ready. The five film arc is pretty carefully mapped out from.
Homecoming has some huge moments for long terms fans of the MCU and the ongoing narrative. The Avengers vacating the New York skyline -- who could they have possibly sold the tower to? Plus Tony and Pepper are back together. As we've discussed in the past I bloody love Gwyneth Paltrow and seeing her brief return to acting here was a real treat. When they kissed I sighed.
That chemistry was one of the engines which made the Iron Man films work and seeing them back together is brilliant (however understandable it was that she didn't appear in Civil War given the tone of that film). This brief scene is the MCU equivalent of the doorstep epilogue between Tim and Daisy at the end of the Spaced DVD documentary. Hopefully we'll see more of this during Infinity War.
One of the problems with the previous films was that his existence and that of the villains never quite sat well without being part of some larger universe filled with superhumans. Spiderman by his nature, along with numerous other "street level" heroes, exists to contrast with the gods and their epic intergalactic battles. Whenever he becomes involved, he is often the audience's way in to the madness.
Homecoming makes that contrast the key story point, of Peter learning that he's not old enough to join the big guys yet, that he should be content to be kid with extraordinary powers, dealing with neighbourhood problems, not to try and skip his development and to an extent training. In all of the fight scenes he's clumsy. He's yet to completely develop his skills.
One of the earlier 60s strips had a newly bitten Spiderman turning up at the Baxter Building attempting to become a member of the Fantastic Four. He failed badly and it wasn't until many years later (barring a few What If? stories) that he had a chance to join that group, when he was older, wiser and ready. The five film arc is pretty carefully mapped out from.
Homecoming has some huge moments for long terms fans of the MCU and the ongoing narrative. The Avengers vacating the New York skyline -- who could they have possibly sold the tower to? Plus Tony and Pepper are back together. As we've discussed in the past I bloody love Gwyneth Paltrow and seeing her brief return to acting here was a real treat. When they kissed I sighed.
That chemistry was one of the engines which made the Iron Man films work and seeing them back together is brilliant (however understandable it was that she didn't appear in Civil War given the tone of that film). This brief scene is the MCU equivalent of the doorstep epilogue between Tim and Daisy at the end of the Spaced DVD documentary. Hopefully we'll see more of this during Infinity War.
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